We Are Americans, Not Hyphenated Americans

So I’m on my couch, curled up in my afghan indulging in a Dove Bar and settling in for my daily dose of wisdom from the Oprah Winfrey Show — you know, wanting to see the world through the lens of the Oprah-fied — when Lisa Ling went and did it.

Ling, reporting from Virginia Tech as Oprah’s special investigative correspondent — which would be Daily Show-esque in its absurdity if not for the tragic circumstance — said the following, "When I first heard that the shooter was Asian, as an Asian-American, my heart sunk because I was really concerned about reprisals against anyone who looks Asian."

The minority victimology and racist America worldview cloaking the backlash concerns of Lisa Ling and a handful of intellectually comatose Asian-American Studies professors is pernicious. Fortunately, most people in this country don’t think like Ling thinks they do.

We don’t hold the South Korean community or the country of South Korea responsible for the Virginia Tech massacre, we hold one person named Cho Seung-Hui responsible for 32 murders.

In response to her concerns, Winfrey asked Ling if there had been a backlash against Asians?

Not so far, said Ling.

Right, Lisa, we non-Asians are still organizing our retaliatory strike.

Just as there was no witch-hunt for Jamaicans after Colin Ferguson shot up a commuter train in Long Island, and no internment of Poles after Ted Kaczynski was identified as the Unabomber, and no vengeance visited upon the Irish for Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, no such indiscriminate targeting of Asians will occur.

This is a time when Americans comes together to mourn together as a people, not as hyphenated Americans. We are sorrowful for the loss of life-all life. We anguish over what might have been for those 32 students — the careers they would have forged, the families they would have raised, the people they would have touched.

The last thing we need right now is lobotomized racial identity politics from someone that has a heck of time matching wits with Joy Behar.

Mr. Proft is a Principal of Urquhart Media LLC, a Chicago-based public affairs firm and political commentator for the Don Wade & Roma Morning Show (5-9 a.m.) on Chicago's number one news talk radio station, WLS-AM 890. He can be reached at dan@urqmedia.com. For other Dan Proft commentaries (radio & print), please visit: .